Customers’ voracious appetite for audiobooks seems to once again be a problem for subscription platform Playster. A few months back, I wrote about Playster cancelling the accounts of customers for excessive audiobook listening (here and here). At the same time, they quickly and quietly raised the price of the audiobook portion of their subscription service from $9.95 to $14.95.

Now, Playster has announced that they are limiting the size of the collection for subscribers at the $14.95 level and adding a new unlimited premium tier at double the price: $29.95.

Playster is calling the plan at the $14.95 price point the Basic plan. The plan offers “unlimited access to 40,000+ titles from world-class authors, like Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich and Faye Kellerman.” Playster also says they have improved the audiobook player experience.

The new Premium plan offers “unlimited access to 100,000+ of the newest titles made available on the same day they’re released”. The Premium plan includes authors like James Patterson, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Dan Brown, George R.R. Martin. Subscribers are promised “unlimited access to every major and classic title they can dream of”.

According to Playster’s support page on the plan changes, “some members may temporarily lose access to their playlists, downloaded titles and/or audiobooks they’ve started.”

The changes to the audiobook plans went into effect yesterday, December 22, 2017. As of today, the website is still showing $14.95 for the cost of the audiobook subscription.

Not surprisingly, the complaints have already started. On TrustPilot, the words bait and switch are used a lot. Most people are saying that the books they have saved to read are all in the Premium tier. Customers who recently started free trials are complaining that the trial only seems to apply to the Basic tier, not the Premium. One comment said that all the books in the basic tier were the same content available on Librivox (a service that offers free public domain audiobooks). Others are saying that, with the new, higher price, Audible is a better deal.

Subscription service Scribd made many similar choices in February and March of 2016 and it cost them a lot of subscribers. Scribd culled many of its popular genres (like the romance and comics categories) and also divided its catalog into two tiers and limited the number of books and audiobooks subscribers could access in Selects, its premium tier.

I don’t doubt that we will hear more about this from customers. As audiobooks continue to soar in popularity, affordable access for avid listeners is going to be an even more important issue. Subscription services seem to continue to underestimate the demand for audiobooks.

The public library is looking better and better for audiobook aficionados.

Today is a day of action for a coordinated effort to convince Congress to stop the vote to repeal existing net neutrality provisions. A meeting is scheduled to vote on this matter on Thursday, December 14, 2017.

Call or email them and let them ask them to to stop the vote. Let them know:

We want an open and free Internet. A neutral open Internet, free of censorship is essential to free speech.

Small businesses rely on an open and free Internet.

We do not want ISPs to block content, websites or applications.

We do not want ISPs to slow or speed up services or create classes of service.

We do not want ISPs to charge online services for access or fast lanes to Internet access providers’ customers.

We know that the initial comment period on this rule change was interfered with by fake submissions and comments from Russian email addresses.

We know that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has REFUSED to cooperate with New York Attorney General Schneiderman’s investigation into the identity theft surrounding these irregularities.

Recently, I wrote a post on some of the new third-party covers that are now available for the All-New Kindle Oasis e-reader. Interest in third-party covers surged given the problems with the Amazon-branded covers for the Oasis e-reader. Reviews blasted the Amazon covers saying that they only partially covered the back and attached with weak magnets that frequently fell off. Amazon evidently listened to the bad reviews because their leather and fabric covers are only available used on Amazon.com.

Because I have had bad experiences with them personally, I generally don’t purchase the Amazon-branded covers. But one of the things I discovered about the new Oasis is that the aluminum back is EXTREMELY slippery to read without a cover. Since I did not want to buy one of Amazon’s, I actually had to wait to really use my new Oasis until third-party cases were available.

The cutouts for the power button at top (right) and the charging port at the bottom (left):

The open, empty case showing the soft, microfiber lining:

Here is the open case with the Oasis for reference:

Here is the case with the Oasis correctly inserted into the case:

The case is lightweight enough that it only adds about four and a half ounces to the weight of the e-reader but still provides a lot of protection (and, yes, I’ve dropped it already!).

When I pre-ordered my cover, only black was available. Now the cover also comes in indigo blue as well as several designs: an almond blossom, a floral purple, a tree design and a starry night design (based on the Van Gogh painting). I bought a second cover in the almond blossom which has a lovely teal-aqua colored background.

(Because of the light, in person, this case leans more towards a teal or an aqua rather than the blue showing in the photo.)

I am very pleased with this cover and do not hesitate to recommend it if you are looking for a case for your 2017 Kindle Oasis.. You can see the other colors and designs here.

This year, I didn’t buy a thing on black Friday or cyber Monday. Nothing. Nunca. Nada.

This is actually kind of unheard of for me, especially given the fact that I’m such a technology buff. Cyber Monday has actually been my favorite self-gifting holiday of the year.

Why the change this year?

I think a big part of the reason is the so many of the items offered for sale I already have. I’ve already bought Echos, Echo Shows, Echo Dots, Kindle Paperwhites, a Kindle Oasis, Fire tablets, Fire TV sticks, etcetera. The picture in this post is just a few of the items that I already have (yes, there are more that arrived after I took that picture) and am currently testing to review.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the prices that these items have been offered at makes me wish that I hadn’t just recently bought them. But it’s really hard to get excited about bargains for things you already qwn.